


what a feeling to fly (what a feeling)

by zvyozdochka



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, Freedom, Gen, Introspection, Metaphors, POV Second Person, Plans For The Future, contemplating the nature of freedom, is it a mid life crisis if it takes place as school is finishing?, the author does not know how to tag, vague references to suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 05:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10802709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zvyozdochka/pseuds/zvyozdochka
Summary: Freedom.This is what you long for, more than anything else in the world. To be free.It took you until you saw Rin’s face, crinkled with concern and asking about the future, that you realised you didn’t have the faintest idea about what freedom truly meant.





	what a feeling to fly (what a feeling)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ABBA's 'Eagle', which suits this absurdly well. I wrote this at three am, so please feel free to tell me if there's any mistakes I missed, but otherwise, enjoy!

You dream, more than anything, of that circling bird. More than the water that ensnares you, more than the friendships that bind you, more than all the empty seats in full classrooms that leave you lonely and wistful and so _blank_.

You dream of the bird. You didn’t know why, at first. You thought you were just bored, spent too long looking out the classroom window, daydreaming. That was not odd, you would assure yourself in those days. Plenty of people did not want to be at school, would stare into some sort of middle distance whilst the teacher taught math. At least he looked at something tangible.

So perhaps that was how it started. But it was more, so much more than that, and you were never quite sure why. 

Freedom. 

This is what you long for, more than anything else in the world. To be free.

It took you until you saw Rin’s face, crinkled with concern and asking about the future, that you realised you didn’t have the faintest idea about what freedom truly meant.

You knew how it felt. Of course you did, how could you not? Freedom was weightlessness, was the soundless chill of the water and the blue tinted sunlight and the creature you let consume you as you sank to the bottom and wondered what it would be like to cease. Freedom was the burn in your lungs and the smell of chlorine, of salt, of sunscreen and fish. Freedom was everything you felt when you sank, everything you felt when you swam—

But you were never truly free.

You think, perhaps, that is why you dream of the bird. You thought differently of it at first, too.

Weightless. Boundless. No ropes and no work and nothing to tie it down, it circled above everything and drifted. It was your mirror image, reflected on the sky. Wing tips, cutting through the air, slinging a space for its body to slip through. It was poetry in motion, it was Rei’s elusive pinnacle of beauty, it was freedom.

Until, abruptly, it was not. Because when you looked at it, you no longer saw the freedom in its isolation but the sorrow, and in its powerful wings you saw work and work and work and the ties of life are thus: water is above all, but air and food and purpose and emotion, these are what keep you alive, what tie you down.

You look at that bird, circling endlessly, and you think of the mackerel you will have for lunch, dinner, breakfast, and the money you need for it, and the job you need for that money, and the time you need for the job. Freedom is… inconceivable.

This was, perhaps, when you started to break.

Then again, perhaps it started long ago. Little teeth, sharp with pride, bared in a grin that says _swim with me_. A sharkish smile and a dream that rips him away and with him he takes all the pieces of you that he had snared around that smile.

They ask, now, what you plan to do, and you think _freedom_ and you do not know what to say. School, for all it was something you hated for stealing you away from the cool embrace of the water and from your freedom, was steady. Solid. A port in a storm.

You think about the future and you cannot see anything, because all you want is to swim, to surrender to the depths and care for nothing beyond it, but to do that you must obey the rules of life: air, water, food, purpose, emotion.

All you want is the water and you think that the rest are a waste of time, and they ask over and over about your plans and you look out the window to that bird and wish you could fly away.

Emotion.

Your list used to have only three points: air, water, food. You were little, then, barely brushing doorknobs with your head. The teacher had asked you what you needed to survive. She had nodded at your list, ruffled your hair, and ignored your unhappiness to extoll the virtues of shelter and exercise and safety for human survival.

You did not believe her.

You met Makoto that day, and he told you he could not survive without friendship, without something to do with himself. You almost argued, thought better of it. 

You did not agree with him until you restored the swim club with Nagisa and Rei and found yourself floundering in the wake of Rin. You did not agree with him until you had another reason to swim, and suddenly you could not imagine the water without them, without shrieks and splashes and giggles and the flash of glasses in the sun.

So they became the rules of life, the laws by which you held your existence together. Freedom, you thought, was free of rules. Free of everything.

_Impossible._

Because life was its own form of slavery, one you were born to live, one you were supposed to love. You didn’t. Not as you should.

You swam because you could not cease, and you obeyed the laws because you had no choice. You loved, which made it all worthwhile, perhaps. Purpose, the elusive law of living. You loved the water, loved your friends. It was a short list.

You think you are a little bit broken. 

For now, it is enough.

So you crave freedom and watch it slip through your fingers, and you do not know what you will do when you leave the cage of school. 

The bird circles.

_Tamed beasts were never meant to fly,_ Rei’s documentary whispers in the back of your mind. _Natural instinct overridden by a lifetime of training, the wild becomes dangerous._

The bird circles.

You yearn, but you cannot fly— you are, after all, human.


End file.
